


The Cottage on the Amaranthine Coast

by Hezjena2023



Series: Rituals!Verse - Red Riding Hood [5]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angsty?, But just guess who turns up, Cottage Au, F/M, Happy Ending, Iseshena thinks she found a place no one else knows about, Post-Veil, She just wants a couple days off, all fun and games in the AU, and these two have to work through the problems with their cease fire, fixit of my own fic, just so much fluff, prompt, the continuing adventures of the AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:07:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25187659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hezjena2023/pseuds/Hezjena2023
Summary: Tucked in a little untouched corner on the Amarthine Coast, was a cosy cottage. Built of sandy, yellow brick with grey slate tiles making up the roof, ivy growing up the side of the chimney and whitewashed shutters on each of the windows. It was set in a little grounds, small, but self contained. Raised beds for growing plants, and pressed up against the wooden fence were planting buckets for tomatoes and strawberries.Inside there was a larder full of preserves, two good bottles of elderflower wine and a basket of fresh food was sitting on a counter under a rafter hung with herbs all tied up with twine. And by the sink there was a kitchen knife hidden under a tea towel.***The happy ending Iseshena and Solas deserve, but won't get in Rituals.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Series: Rituals!Verse - Red Riding Hood [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827190
Comments: 21
Kudos: 33
Collections: Solasmance Cottage AU Challenge





	1. Marmelade on Toast

**Author's Note:**

  * For [piecesofsolas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofsolas/gifts).



Tucked in a little untouched corner on the Amarthine Coast, was a cosy cottage. Built of sandy, yellow brick with grey slate tiles making up the roof, ivy growing up the side of the chimney and whitewashed shutters on each of the windows. It was set in a little grounds, small, but self contained. Raised beds for growing plants, and pressed up against the wooden fence were planting buckets for tomatoes and strawberries. 

Inside there was a larder full of preserves, two good bottles of elderflower wine and a basket of fresh food was sitting on a counter under a rafter hung with herbs all tied up with twine. And by the sink there was a kitchen knife hidden under a tea towel. 

This little corner of Ferelden was so far untouched by the War, but she knows that could change in an instance. So Iseshena sat on the floor by the crackling fire, on a thick wooden rug to keep the chill from her legs. The fire was burning clean and smokeless until she pulled herbs from the pouch at her side, with a prayer on her lips she added them to the flames. Translucent tendrils of white smoke lick upwards, she hopes that by the time they escape the chimney they’ll be invisible against the clear skies. 

It was nothing like the first time she’d set foot in the cottage. Then it had been almost three years previous, when they’d found this little house, the veil had been intact. The weather had been awful, the rain had been almost horizontal as the storm had raged above their heads. 

Solas had brought her through the howling winds, guided by the unfailing ability to sense an Elvhen artifact nearby, little did she know at the time that he’d planted them there. Of course he’d known where they were. And dutifully she’d followed him and found the object hidden by the low stone wall of the derelict cottage. 

Then they’d spent the night under the caved in roof, huddled and shivering together. Wrapped up in woolen blankets and listening to the thunder raging, watching the flashes of lightning momentarily brightening the horizon. They passed the time passing barely audible stories back and forth, he’d told her about Arlathen and it had been the first night she’d told him she planned to escape Thedas. To set sail, like her father and disappear into the waves. 

A year later she’d bought the house, determined to protect the artifact and had the cottage slowly and quietly repaired, even Leliana didn’t know of its existence. 

Now she’d found it again, like a blessing from kinder gods. 

She stood and brushed the flecks of Sylaise’s herbs from her hand and moved over to the counter. On a shelf by the sink there were little wine glasses, with stubby stems and wide bowls. She plucked one up and uncorked one of the bottles of elderflower wine with her teeth and spat the cork into the sink. Sipping the sweet liquid, she leant up against the windowsill of the kitchen. 

Through the window, she could see up the path to the mountains and the track that led down to the sea. She was thankfully alone but for Torchbearer, her hart, happily nibbling fresh grass in the little stable-stall to the side of the house. She sighed, even as the world had turned upside down, this place remained. 

Secret, hers. 

Well, Torchbearer knew about this place as well, but he wasn’t likely to tell anyone. 

Her belly rumbled and she sourced a loaf of fresh bread from the basket that she’d bought in a market she’d passed through yesterday morning for more coins than it was worth. One handed she didn’t cut it, just tore a chunk off and jabbed a blunt butter-knife into a jar of Antivan marmalade she’d brought with her. She spread a thin layer of the bitter preserve on the bread, careful not to waste it, it was expensive but it reminded her of Josephine. Of everyone she’d lost. 

She’d only taken a bite, a dribble of orange jam sliding down her chin when she glanced up to see a figure was steadily walking down the path. Her breath caught for a moment and she ducked out of sight. Her eyes passed over the fireplace to ensure that no smoke would give away her presence. 

She knew there was a large bounty on her head. And she hoped that the strange wouldn’t notice her. After what seemed like enough time had passed, Iseshena peeked around the window frame. The figure had not left, instead they were stood by Torchbearer, with their back to her. 

First she noticed that Torchbearer didn’t buck at the stranger’s presence, he even accepted scratches to his muzzle. Confused, Iseshena shifted her attention to the figure. It was a man, tall with broad shoulders, and she could make out the hint of an Elvhen air. 

“Fuck,” she hissed as she recognised him. 

Perhaps Solas heard her, as pale as a ghost, he turned to her. His bright eyes finding hers through the window. 

She dropped to her knees, her heart pounding under her ribs. What was Solas doing here? She groped up onto the counter for the knife she’d hidden under the tea towel and finding a hilt she drew the weapon down to her chest. 

_Fen’Harel, Lord of Nightmares, Betrayer of the Evanuris_ was on the other side of the wall. 

She’d loved him once upon a time, before he’d stolen her arm and her heart and smashed them both to pieces. Before he’d reignited a war that had been raging for thousands of years. Before they’d found themselves on opposite sides of the battlefield. 

But worse than all of that, this was supposed to be her week off. 

There was a rapt of knuckles against the wooden door, “Inquisitor?” 

Her old title, from before. 

She closed her eyes, gripping the knife to her chest. Fool that she was, he’d tracked her down. He’d caught her scent years before, and she’d stupidly believed that she might be safe for a moment, a little time to catch her breath. But, that was an extravagance wasn’t it. 

She couldn’t very well sit here on the kitchen floor and pretend she wasn’t home. Summoning what was left of her dignity she found her feet, from the window, she could see that Torchbearer was unharmed. Which made no sense to her and the strategic mind she’d cultivated, she’d expected him to at least incapacitate her means of escape. But, he hadn’t, which meant he underestimated her - which gave her the slimmest chance, if only she could get past him. 

Another knock at the door. “Iseshena?”

She swallowed hard, hearing the strange way he pronounced her name, feeling it settle under her ribs. The vowels curled with a dialect that had over thousands of years corrupted into hers. She licked her dry lips with her tongue and stepped forward towards the door. Then she tightened her grip on the knife in her hand and used it to flick the latch on the door. With a little difficulty she unhooked the latch, knocked the door open with her foot and brandished the knife at him. “What do you want, Solas?”

Unfazed by the greeting, his eyes darkened lightly and looked down to the butter-knife Iseshena was wielding. He raised an eyebrow as a glob of marmalade dripped from the knife and splattered against the stone tile. “Are you going to stab me with that?”

“Are you going to give me cause?” She returned defiantly, trying not to cringe at the blunt blade. Taking her eyes from him for a heartbeat to see if more of his men were coming. She couldn’t have guessed he’d be the one to claim the bounty on her head, but he was the Betrayer. 

“Will you let me in?” He asked, stepping forward to gently take the blade of the butter knife, pointing it away from his face. 

Iseshena’s mouth was dry, the sharp taste of bitter orange on her tongue. She inclined her head in the bared possible nod, shifting onto her back foot. She’d move past him as he stepped inside. 

He looked different to the last time she’d seen him, but he’d been splattered in grime and gore and wearing what had been golden armour in the morning, but by that afternoon was as filth-stained as everything else on the field. 

Now he was clean, wearing some dark green jumper in a design she recognised as being Elvhen, the baggy sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His trousers though, were ever tight. He looked softer, less like the enemy she’d grown to fear, but more like the man she had loved. 

She was so caught with this thought that she didn’t slip away, she just stood by the door and watched him enter the space. 

Solas looked around, his eyes finding a tea pot by the fireplace. “Would you like me to put the kettle on?” 

A surprised laugh broke free from her throat, “you don’t like tea.”

“But you do.” He offered softly, his eyes traced over her. Noting her differences, the new creases by her eyes, the dozen more strands of grey in her curls. On the remains of her left arm was the mechanical foundations of the crossbow that replaced her missing limb, the crossbow itself was nowhere to be seen. Older, but no less beautiful. 

She was frowning when his eyes found her face again. “I’m on the wine,” she told him sharply and he found the wineglass abandoned on the counter. “Are you alone?” She asked, he could catch the fearful undertone. 

“I am alone,” he told her truthfully and turned his back to her, finding a new glass and filling them both. There was nothing he could do about the fear in her voice, he couldn’t promise her that he wouldn’t hurt her, because he knew she’d hold him to it. So instead he picked up the hunk of bread that had fallen to the floor. 

He fit too well in the space, he was domestic, cutting new slices off the loaf. She watched him busy around the kitchen with an odd feeling of disembodiment, like she was watching a spirit moving around the Fade in a dream. “Wake up.” 

There was a clang by the fireplace, of metal against brick. 

Her breath caught in her throat when he lifted up a horrible spiked wrought iron instrument, “easy,” he whispered, and slipped the two pieces of bread into the contraption and placed it by the fire to toast the bread. It was only then, that he picked up her glass and offered it to her. His eyes met hers, bright blue and hopeful. “This is not the Fade. In truth, I did not expect you to remember this place.”

“How could I forget this place?” She faltered, and changed the question. “How did you find me?”

“I did not know you were here until I saw your hart, I’ve been coming here when I needed space, I leave coins,” he confessed reluctantly. His arm ached from keeping it outstretched, but he did not pull back. He knew he had no right to ask for her trust, but he had only the glimmer of hope born from the simple fact that she had not already fled. 

“The coins were you? I bought this house, the house is mine,” she replied, blinking at him. She bit her tongue, she’d almost told him he could have stayed for free. But every copper for her cause was one that didn’t fund his. Iseshena shook her head and closed the door, and pressed her face up against the wood. “Idiot,” she hissed at herself, not quite able to shake the thought of him upstairs sleeping in her sheets. His legs kicking as he dreamed and waking up fitfully and frozen with the covers on the floor. Wistfully, she turned back to him.

“The first time I came back here was the day the Veil fell, when I found the wards were inert, I stayed for the week. I kept expecting someone to turn up, but no one did, I thought the owners were - gone.”

“Who else did you tell about this place?” Her question stumbled out in a gasp. 

“No one, I told no one about this place.” 

Iseshena counted them off on her fingers, everyone that knew of her little house on the Coast is long dead as well. She glanced up, catching the blue of his eyes, before looking away again. “Why did you leave coins, then?” 

“It seemed like the right thing to do, it’s what you would have done.” 

Her lip wobbled and she couldn’t look at him anymore, but she took the elderflower wine, exchanging it for the butter knife which clattered against the counter. He always left her unarmed. So she drank the wine, it was unadulterated, sweet and tart as the summer of their romance. 

The room took on the scent of baking bread, and they stood on opposite sides of the room like a mockery of that battlefield, waiting to see who would break first. 

It was Solas, who reached across for the tea towel, pausing only for a heartbeat when he found the knife underneath, he didn’t touch it. Using the cloth to wrap around the iron bread toaster and with flicking gestures, he pulled out the hot toast onto the counter, spread a thick layer of marmalade on them.

He stepped back for a moment to admire the herbs hanging down and plucked a strand of thyme, crushed it between his palms and sprinkled it on the toast. He threw her an easy smile that caught, blinking away as he remembered all that they were and all that they were not. “Here,” he said, quieted. 

She felt a sting of pity for him, but quashed it. She can’t trust him, and despite what he’s said she still isn’t confident that this isn’t a trap of sorts. He was a trickster god after all. She thought to tell him she didn’t want his food, but her stomach rumbled again - like the thunder as they’d huddled in the dark those years ago. Furious, that after everything jam on toast was his peace offering, Iseshena stomped over to the counter, letting her glass hit the counter too hard and she took one of the slices. _Fuck,_ it was good. 

She verbalised her pleasure, it was just a hum he told himself sternly, so why did it reverberate through him? He shouldn’t be watching, but he couldn't tear his eyes away, he shouldn’t be consumed with longing? 

When she finished her toast, her gaze flicked to him, her trickster god. He was blushing, the heat reaching the tips of his ears. “Don’t look at me like that,” she grumbled, embarrassed. 

“Ir abelas.” He apologised, tearing his gaze from her. 

Her heart fluttering under her chest, like an angry little caged bird, lamenting the injustice. He was right there, she could just reach out and… no. 

“Don’t.” 

The words dripped from her lips like a pubble slipping into a pond. He felt the ripples wash over him, but couldn’t work out what it meant. Solas watched her flinch away from him _._ “What is it that would you like me not to do?”

Iseshena looked at him, her mouth slightly open. Don’t fight me, she thought, don’t leave me, don’t hurt me again. She closed it again, then looked out of the window. She squared her shoulders and addressed the sink, “you only used to speak Elvhish when we were in bed.” 

He is consumed by the thought of the warm, wet heat of her, the fire behind her eyes and if he were more hot-blooded he’d have grabbed her already. Found her hip with his fingers, her lips with his mouth and backed her into the counter. He’d have slipped his knee between her legs, and stoked her passion until she would’ve begged him to fuck her. 

She sighed, misinterpreting his silence for disapproval. Her fingers rubbed under her eyes at the missing lines of her _vallaslin._ “In retrospect, it makes it feel more honest. That you at least spoke your mother tongue.” 

Unarmed, her words wounded him. He found himself still, shocking into silence. When his words finally came, they’re hesitant, but honest. “Iseshena, I have never lain with you under false pretences.”

She gave him a searching look, she didn’t believe a word of it. She wasn’t sure that she could sift out the lies. “You have marmalade on your face.” She told him. Because it was true. 

Furiously, he swiped at his jaw, missing it completely. 

She snorted with amusement, her ribs tightened. “Here,” Iseshena said, moving on instinct before she thought better of it, her finger swiping away the stain just below his bottom lip. As though realising what she’d done and swiped up the tea towel, and tried to scrub the feel of him off her. “Are you intending to stay?” She snapped, not looking at him, her words harsher than she meant them to be. It was too much, seeing him again. And harder still, what was to come, to leave him again. 

“I was hoping to.” 

“Then I’ll go.” Iseshena decided, and nodded towards the basket she’d brought and the rest of the loaf, “you can keep it.” She turned, wondering if it would be her last offering to the Dread Wolf.

“Iseshena, during the battle-“

She inhaled sharply, she didn’t want to think of it. The blood and filth and waste of it all. 

“-you had a shot, but you didn’t take it. Why?”

“You want to know why I didn’t kill you when I had the chance?” She asked steadily, surprising even herself with how level her voice was, an eyebrow raised. It was the same reason he was going to let her walk out of the cottage, past the flowering bush abuzz with bees and ride away on Torchbearer. The answer felt as light and inconsequential as Orlesian meringue, whipped up egg whites that could blow away in a breeze. “Because, I love you, because I’ve never stopped loving you.” 

Her answer weighed on his shoulders more heavily than his armour. His legs gave way under it and he slumped onto the counter, knuckles white against the lip of the sink to keep him upright. One rolled up sleeve unraveled down to his wrist. He hung his head in shame. If he’d been a better man, he could beg her to stay, he would get on his knees and tell her. But he had set the precedent for leaving in spite of love. He racked his hand over his scalp, couldn’t he even do her the honour of watching her walk away. 

“You’re not even going to ask me to stay?” 

Her voice had caught him unaware, he thought his rogue had slipped away, out of sight and out of reach. Disappearing like smoke into the afternoon. But she hadn't. She was there watching him with her fiery eyes, the scars from the flames just visible on her forehead. 

“I am unworthy of you.”

“Regardless, am I unworthy of being asked?” Her hand was crossed over her chest, and she clucked at him in the disapproving manner that reminded him of her mother, the Keeper. 

He knew he shouldn’t do it, but acting on instinct rather than logic, Solas stepped towards her. With reverence, he took her remaining hand, and pressed his lips softly to her knuckles, “Iseshena, will you stay?”

She pulled herself away from him, cradling her hand against her chest. The blazing memory of his kiss on the back of her hand had her pulse racing, her hammering under her ribs. She wanted him - far more than his chaste adoration. 

“I suggest,” she swallowed, “I propose a peace treaty to last as long as we stay here.” And she had another offering to give, but this time it wasn’t a kind-hearted gift. It was information, and she spread it out between them, thick as the orange jam he’d spread over her toast. “No one knows to find me here, and you said no one will disturb you.” She took her hand and lay her hand on the stained wood of the door, her fingers splayed against the raised carving. She turned to face the door. “But, the peace breaks the moment one of us leaves.” 

A shiver crept up her spine as he laid his hand over hers. “And then?” He vocalised, knowing the answer even before he did.

“And then the next time we meet, I will try not to miss.” Her voice cracked, as brittle as spin sugar. Iseshena dropped her forehead against the warm wooden door. A moment’s panic coursed under her skin as she realised that she had trapped herself with the Dread Wolf, but it passed as she remembered that she’d trapped him here as well. 

“I love you,” he told her, as his chest ached from all of the emotion carried and buried for years. He allowed a drop of longing to break upon the surface of his composure, a ripple that grew larger with each passing heartbeat. He reached for her, his fingers smoothed her curls over her shoulder, and she lent into his touch. 

Iseshena threw her head back and she gasped at the feel of him. She sagged against him, humming as he pressed a kiss to the curve of her neck. 

Then Iseshena turned, she caught his jaw and brought him down so she might kiss him. Properly this time, fiercely, desperately. Then her hand snaked to fist in the back of his jumper, pulling him closer. And backing them both into the door. 

Solas crashed into her, drawn in by her. He slipped his knee between her legs, as her teeth grazed his lower lip and he bit back a growl. She knew exactly how to inspire his attentions and he knew how to return in kind, So he caught her hip, worrying small circles into the spot there that had her breathless against him. 

The next morning Iseshena woke in a tangle of limbs on the woollen rug on the floor by the dying embers of last night’s fire. A blanket carelessly draped over them, seemingly as an afterthought. The morning sun was streaming through the window, Solas was still asleep. 

She could stay here, forget all of her work, forsake her allies. It would be too easy, just to lay back down on the rug and hold him. Bury her head against his chest and let dreams take her. Iseshena couldn’t deny how appealing the thought was. She almost gave into it, but heard Torchbearer whining restlessly outside the window. Her choice was decided for her. She’d made the deal and now she’d break it. 

Carefully, she picked her way out of his embrace and pulled on her leggings and threw her tunic over her head. She turned and crouched by her lover’s sleeping form and shook him, gently by the shoulder. 

“Iseshena?” Her name was the first to his lips, even groggy from just waking up. He struggled to sit up and pull her back down to him, like a drowning man, she was his driftwood and he did not want to let her go. 

She resisted, shaking her head, her voice quiet as the occasional pop from the fire. “Solas, I’ve got to go.” 

It was inevitable. 

The words unspoken settled between them. 

He sagged against her, his forehead resting on her collarbone. There was so much that he had left to tell her, so many ways in which he had left to love her. But he understood the respite for what it was, a brief interlude in their fighting. She could no easier lay down her arms than the sky could fall. So he stood, pulled his leggings on and walked her to the door. 

She froze, the morning air was chilled, and she stood trembling at the threshold. “I don’t want to leave.” She told the dew strewn morning, then she turned back to him and repeated her words, cupping his face with her hand. “I don’t want to leave, but Torchbearer needs me, he needs fresh hay and muzzle scratches and some time off his leash to stretch his legs.” It sounded like a wretched excuse even as the words left her lips.

He caught her hand on his face, covering it with his own. “You’re just going to see to your hart?” He tried not to sound utterly, pathetically hopeful. “You could come just back and we could pretend?” 

“Does it matter? The deal was made. I offered and you accepted.” Her hand dropped from his cheek and around his neck, pulling her body against his in a desperate final moment. Her mother’s warning rang painfully true in her ears, _never make deals with wolves._ Her Keeper had never told her it was because she’d break her own heart in the process. 

He just looked back at her for a long time, as though it might be the last time they saw each other, as though he was scribing to memory every detail of her. “Stay at least for breakfast?” 

“If I stay for breakfast, I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to go.” She admitted, looking up at him. Willing him to understand, to not make this harder for her than it already was. 

“What if,” he began, pausing when she drew back to look at him. “What if we went through the door together? That way neither leaves first, and the peace remains intact.” 

Iseshena stared at him, for a long moment before she laughed. The sound was almost foreign to her, “you’re serious, aren’t you?” She threw her arm up into the air, frustrated, “don’t you have battles to plan and my forces to infiltrate?” 

He couldn’t lie to her, if she left him here, that was exactly what he would do. If she left, if she took a step to her left. “Do you remember the couple we discovered in the Hinterland?”

“No.”

“It was before we found Skyhold.” He told her, stood in the doorway of the little cottage. “One of your agents and a rebel mage, they’d found each other through the fighting. They’d been having a picnic.”

Iseshena wanted to tell him that she didn’t remember it, but she did. She reached for his hand, interlacing their fingers. “They found common ground in the centre of the storm. It was a lovely spot, on a hill under a tree.”

“I thought it was the most reckless thing that I’d ever seen,” he smiled as he remembered it, rubbed his thumb over the back of Iseshena’s hand. “And the most hopeful, the most beautiful.” 

A shiver had risen on the bare skin of her forearm. The sun drenched cottage was hope, an escape from fighting two sides of a War they were no longer invested in. That they needed to play no further part in. 

“Iseshena will you stay with me here and ride out the storm? Have a picnic on a hill amongst the chaos?” 

Her answer was as easy as breathing, as sweet as sticky marmalade. “Yes.” 

Together they stepped out of the front door of the little cottage into the fresh morning air. And then it took all of Iseshena’s will to let go of his hand and walk around the little cottage to Torchbearer, who was grumpy until she presented him with a handful of plums. There was a gentle gnawing anxiety, deep in the pit of her stomach, that she would return to the house to find it empty. 

But when she did, he was there, more bread toasting by the fire and kettle already boiling. And when she got to close he caught her by the waist, pressed desperate kisses to her lips and throat. And laughing they made it up the stairs to fall into bed together. As she drifted off, she buried her head into his jumper, content in his company. 

During the afternoon, she woke to find that he had disappeared. Coming down the stairs, he was returned from the market with her basket over his arm. It was full with pots of honey and jam, fresh bread and eggs and more bottles of elderflower wine. 

The Cottage’s peace was hard fought, and well won. And such it spread to the village a quarter days' ride away and to the tavern there; were two unfamiliar elves would visit once a month and speak only to themselves and drink the local ale. It even grew to encompass the pebble path that trailed down the hill and wound it way down to the sandy beach below. 

And the war raged half a world away; but it did not find them there in the ivy covered cottage with the grey roof, and the planters full of berries, nestled in a forgotten corner of the Amarthine Coast. 

  
  



	2. The Letter and the Red Cloak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PiecesofSolas - you asked for a part two I'm only sorry that it took so long! <3

Plumes of acrid smoke covered the muddy field, the sun was all but blotted out, the stench of death and the sulphuric scent of battle magic filled the air. Solas’ mana was getting low, it was a strange sensation as he hadn’t gotten even close to his limit since the early days of the Inquisition, when he had just awoken and was still reclaiming his magic. 

As he did often on the battlefield, he moved unconsciously, a flick of the fingers, sending mana out to where it was needed. It was an old habit, an instinct for trouble, cultivated from centuries of war. When he cast the barrier, he did not need a staff, the intimate magic already knew the every inch of his ally. 

It would have been better if he’d considered the action. A moment later, he found his quarry. Mud-splattered, but undiminished. The red of her typical outfit caked and stained, but nothing else mattered. Time stood still. Solas’ breath caught in his ribs. Everyone else fell away, like a bad dream, it was only the two of them. She was so close, barely fifty paces away, he could stretch out his hand...

He watched her not notice his barrier for a heartbeat, as she threw a bolt into the crossbow attached to her forearm and fired it into the face of an elvhen warrior with his sword raised. She didn’t flinch as the bolt took out the man attacking her, rather she twisted, eyes darting for the caster of the barrier. A hopeful look as she tried to find her ally in the bleak terrain. 

Watching her look down again, a double take, at her fingers - he saw the smile wipe off her face, replaced with a horrified look. The colour of his magic was as tell-tail as his fingerprints upon her skin, as clear as if he had been foolish enough to write his signature along her belly. 

She jammed another bolt into her crossbow and darted her head back and forth, trying to pick out his shape among the mess of men and spirits upon the field. 

Finally, her eyes found his, her lower lip dropped open, even as the wind took her hood down, her dark curls had been tied up with golden thread. 

He took a step.

Iseshena raised her weapon at him. 

They stood like that. 

She fired the bolt. 

He made no move to defend himself. 

A sharp pain prodded beneath his shoulder blade and he blinked into a dark room. Beams above his head came into view as his eyes adjusted to the low light. Sometime during the night, he’d lost his covers to the thief that was there, curled into him and stealing what was left of his warmth. Every curve of her body was pressed up against his, they interlocked like two pieces of a jigsaw. Her face pressed into his back, her nose jabbing into his shoulder blade. 

Which explained that. 

Unwinding himself from the tangle of limbs, he turned to face her. 

Iseshena. She hummed in her sleep. 

It had just been a dream, a memory. 

Solas pressed the lightest of kisses to her forehead, feeling the raised vertical scars that had been burnt into her forehead. He buried the sting of guilt at indirectly being the cause of them. He couldn’t have known, couldn’t have stopped it, the proud voice of reason rings in his head - he should not be ashamed. 

Iseshena mumbled something under her breath and reached out for him in her sleep, but missed as the forearm was long gone. Dissolved into nothing to keep the poison in her palm from killing her. Only a small band of metal remained, living an inch above where her elbow was, the remains of the crossbow she hadn’t shot him with. 

Iseshena was still dreaming, her nose twitched and under heavy lids her eyes darted back and forth. 

The jagged ruins of her arm, that is something that he should be ashamed of, was still ashamed of. Something that he carried the weight of. Although the limb has long healed, he still curses himself, for being unable to find a better solution than hacking the whole thing off. Guilty, he brought the blanket back over her shoulder and smoothed a thumb across her furrowed nose. 

Without opening her eyes, she demanded grumpily, “it is not yet sunrise, Solas. Get back in this bed.”

“That is a very tempting offer,” he told her honestly, but he is not sure he would be able to get back to sleep. 

His words are not enough to placate her, as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. Stretching her arm over her head like a cat, before covering a wide yawn with her hand. “What’s wrong, my love?”

“Nothing vhenan, I merely woke up and had intentions of beginning breakfast.” 

She is not fooled by his blatant distraction of breakfast, “bad dreams again?”

“And old dream.” He admitted, perching back on the side of the bed. 

Iseshena moved behind him to sit, and wrapped her arm around him, one leg on either side of his hips. She pressed herself against his back, nor quite tall enough to rest her chin on his shoulder, “the same one again? Will you tell me what happens this time?”

“I just walk an old battlefield, there is nothing to speak of.” 

Except, it was exactly the right thing to piqued her interest. She tries to bury her curiosity, even as she fails and her questions come spilling out. Apologetically, she peppered her questions with little kisses against his neck. “A battlefield? How old? Who was fighting?” 

His breath caught against his teeth, he closed his eyes and lent back against her. 

“Ah,” she breathed, sagging a little, “that one. I remember that one.” She swallowed and then offered brightly, “Well since we are both up, shall we go up to the market this morning?”

“I shall put the kettle on for you,” he agreed, standing as she began to clamber out of the bed. He caught her and pressed his lips to the back of her hand, grateful that she does want a further recount of that day.

“I’ll be down,” she smiled, nodding her head towards a shelf on the wall, with nine gaudilly painted figurines. He knows they’re older and some of the paintwork is cracking off, but he does not look at them.

His complicity in her continued faith extended only to putting the shelf up for her, because she asked. He cannot understand why she keeps her Dalish statues, why she still makes offerings to the Evanuris - even now - knowing everything they are, everything they have done. But he reasoned, he doesn’t actually have to look, doesn’t have to understand. 

The golden light of dawn steamed through the lead-lined windows of the first-floor bedroom, spilling across the unmade bed and onto Iseshena’s back. She closed her eyes to the sensation, feeling the warmth across her back, as she raised the little cup of water towards her idols. 

There isn’t much space to work with, so she nudges the offering cup up next to a burning candle in a jar and whispers the prayer to accompany librations. She touched a burning match to a little tapered candle and flashed her palms around her face. Then, blinked blurry eyed and rubbed her eyes with her fingertips, stifling another yawn. 

It’s early. 

Iseshena left the candle burning as she dressed for the day. Knowing that they will be going into the market of the little village up on the top of the cliff, she pulls out an unfamiliar costume. In the mirror, her clothes are evocative of a city elf rather than a Dalish woman. She fiddles with the high collar tight around her neck, trying to adjust the various layers into the right place, before giving up and undoing the highest button. 

She frowned at her reflection and picked up her rich Dalish cloak, made of red felt, and folds it over her arm. It will not help with her disguise, but is it hooded and the Fereldan mornings are not known for their temperate conditions even in summer. 

A sudden thought strikes her and she looks back at her strange little shrine. 

On the far side of the statues she keeps a small box for her supplies, matches and trinkets, lying on top of a false bottom. Glancing at the empty doorway, she pulled out the trick drawer and took out the letter that she wrote a week ago. She taps the folded paper twice against the wood of the box, running her finger across the name carefully inked on the front and feels her heart hammering under her ribs. 

With a final, furtive glance towards the watchful wolf-headed figure on her shelf, she tucks the letter into the pocket of her cloak. Feeling the weight of the letter in her pocket, like a cannonball, she packs her things away. Then leans over to blow out the candle, as she does, she nodded at them - asking the statues to keep her secret until she is ready to tell it. 

At the bottom of the stairs, Iseshena is greeted by a slim, solid black cat with two big yellow eyes, who mews for attention and twists his body around her legs. Rolling her eyes, she stopped to give him a scratch behind the ears, before contented, he darts off. Most likely to chase after any unfortunate mice that have strayed too close to their cottage. 

By the time she rights herself, her lover is in front of her passing a steaming cup of hot mint tea into her hands. Even on the step, she’s still shorter than him, but only just. 

“You look,” he started, but broke off. His eyes ravage over her, noting the unusual dress, lingering on the patches of exposed skin across her shoulders. He pressed forward, capturing her a kiss, before sliding his tongue into her mouth as she gasped. 

Her body arched towards him. 

He chuckles pulling back, looking rather too smug with himself, “you’ll spill your tea,” he admonished. Taking the moment of her distraction to exchange the cup of fresh mint tea for the cloak draped over her arm. The letter falls out of the pocket and onto the floor, the name facing to the ground. 

Iseshena swallowed as he picked up her letter. He laid the cloak down on the arm of the sofa, the letter sitting on top, bright off-white against red. 

“I look?” She asked, hoping for a distraction. 

Solas turned back to her with an eyebrow raised, “hmm?” 

“You said, ‘I looked?’” And she took her mint tea, across the room, to the wooden table covered in watermarks that sat beside the kitchen countertop. Partly so she could sit down, but also to distance herself from the incriminating note. She blows on the steam, then sets it down without a sip. 

“Beautiful,” he told her without missing a beat. Stepping over to swop his thumb across her exposed collarbone, “distracting.”

“Sweet talker,” she returned in a tone that she knew would bring a small scoff and wry smile to his lips. Before she settled back and inhaled the smells of cooking breakfast, “is there anything I can do to help?”

His gaze dropped guilty on her left arm. “Nothing, vhenan.”

Ignoring him, she fished through their open shelves of their pantry to find a jar of jam for the porridge that is bubbling by the fire. Pushing aside a small collection of jars of pickled walnuts and the very last sliver of Antivan marmalade, she finds the apricot jam. Turning back she caught him looking at the note, her attempted joke turned stale in her mouth, “I should have asked Dagna to make me a chopping knife as well as my crossbow.”

The cockerel outside answered her, crowing, only a little late for the dawn. 

“You’re dangerous enough already without wielding kitchen equipment.” It’s meant to be a lightly made comment, but there is a bitterness wrapped around his tone that dragged his words crashing to the ground. 

There is no more hiding, Iseshena thought, settling the prize of a jar of jam down on the ring marked table. Taking a seat and asking her cup of tea glumly, “do you ever regret it?”

The younger part of Solas, the hot-blooded and cocky man, reacted with alarm. He was drowning in the depths of the question. As he pictured her words upon the parchment, in her looping hand, he jumped to the painful, heartbreaking, conclusion that she was leaving. 

That their imperfect peace was shattered. Their cottage was a picturesque dreamscape that he could never have believed was real, except it was and it had been. But, it was time to wake up. He’d known it the moment he’d seen the letter drop onto the ground and pretended not to notice. 

Indulging all of his cowardice, he asked, “do you mean to getting the chickens? Of course I regret it, the vicious little monsters are more like deepstalkers with feathers.”

She huffed a breath of amusement at the image, and nodded her head towards the seat opposite. “I wasn’t talking about the chickens.” 

Solas lingered for a moment, if he sat down they’d speak and there was nothing he could do to stop what must be said. “Are you quite sure, we can put Mother Cluckselle in the pot if she doesn’t start laying soon.” 

“We’re not eating them,” Iseshena returned firmly, stretching her hand across the table. Her words like a promise, her palm sitting there on the table like driftwood for him to cling to. 

His eyes darkened like the still blue waters of the Amaranthine Sea before a storm rolled in, but he reached for her all the same. Slipping his fingers through hers, wishing there wasn’t a table between them, wishing he could smooth out the brow-furrowing worry that had settled in her expression. “Did you know that she took a swipe at the cat yesterday?” 

He’d never once called the cat by its real name, only referring to it ever as ‘the cat’ or after sleepy mornings where he liked to wind his way around their feet, ‘the trip hazard.’ 

Iseshena cooed at the thought of the mute adolescent cat, all black, but for twenty razor sharp claws and two bright yellow eyes that watched everything with an enraptured disinterest. “Oh no, was Dirthamen alright?” 

He let himself relax for a single moment, “I regret letting you name the cat,” Solas muttered, slipping his fingers free and standing, moving to her side of the table. He knelt beside her, “vhenan, please, what is this about?”

She stiffened. Her breath held tight in her lungs.

Solas didn’t rush her, he was also a war-forged strategist, he could wait. He would wait. Patiently for her answer and the thousand things she might say next. He loved her, and Iseshena, the woman that she was, shouldered and shrugged off each of his world-ending confessions. 

Whatever this was, he reasoned with himself, it cannot be that bad. Just like that day on the battlefield, he would take what she offered.

“I got a letter from my Keeper,” she whispered, voice small and confessional. Her whole body still, not even her heartbeat as she waited for his reaction. 

He cupped her cheek, his thumb running over the line where branching vallaslin had once intersected her cheekbone. Frowning he asked, “how did your Mother find us?” Under his palm, her cheek was ablaze with heat and she scrunched her eyes shut in embarrassment. 

She moved to pull away, but did not get far. 

“Iseshena?” He prompted. 

Iseshena whined, a single low note before all of her secrets came spilling out in rush. “She’s already planted four trees for me, my love, I didn’t want her to worry and - mpph?”

Solas caught her lower lip between his teeth, effectively stopping her explanation in its tracks. He knew, because he knew her, that in all honesty, she might have lasted a whole week before writing to her Mother. 

Her surprised gasp tasted of apricot, with all the heat of summer behind it and he was drawn in. Iseshena burned hot, to the point that if only she could reclaim her magic, Solas is quite convinced she’d make an instinctive and devastatingly capable fire-mage. 

She slipped off the chair to kneel next to him.

Ending the impulsive kiss, he rested his forehead against hers for a moment. 

Her nose brushed against his. Iseshena’s eyes had fluttered closed, her face still cradled against his palm. She uttered a hum, before sighing and turning to press chaste kisses into hand. Iseshena turned her gaze upon him, searching his expression for any deceit. The hint of a smile breaks upon her lips as she finds none. 

Iseshena had given him a mountain and he had returned a molehill, so she pressed against him, straining her neck a little to get ever closer. To repay his kindness with sweet touches. 

He felt her clawing at his skin and looped his hand around her waist, pulling her closer before slipping down to the anchor point of her hipbone. Her breath hitched, as he knew it would. His fingers linger for a moment, rubbing small circles against the soft curve.

She fixed him with a measured look with warm brown eyes. “You really don’t mind?” She whispered, hopeful, breathless. “That I lied?” 

The edge of his lips drew back, “your omission was unnecessary, I would not stand between you and your Clan.” He chuckled at her expression, her lower lip dropping in surprise. “It is just some letters. It isn’t like she is coming to visit.” 

Iseshena looked down, her curls spilling around her face. She always looked down when she lied, or tried to. She bit her lip, “actually-”

The laughter started low in his chest, a rumble like thunder. The storm was a relief, a break in the tension. He caught her around the waist and drew against him, ending up flat on the floor with her straddled on top of him. “Is that why you decided to tell me now?” 

“Well,” she grinned as she realised what he’d done, but took advantage of her free hand to slide her hand up his chest. Reluctantly propping herself up a little, her hair curtaining them from the rest of the world. Iseshena raised a single eyebrow in taunting challenge. “I thought you were sure to notice the seventy year old lady pottering around our kitchen drinking us out of tea.” 

“Apparently, I can be quite oblivious.” He told her without malice, stroking her hip, “I might not have noticed.” He quieted, stilled as the metal armband struck cool against his skin. He caught her gaze, “do you? Do you have any regrets?” 

Just a hint of a frown formed beneath her lip, she pushed a hand through her hair, moving it out of her face. She pursed her lips, looking distressed, “I just,” she started and stopped, summoning her courage she continued, “I should have told you that I’d broken the truce.”

He glanced towards the fireplace and wondered how they always ended up on this one particular rug. He pulled her cloak from the sofa, bunching it underneath his head, he offered, “we are not at war anymore, so what use do we have for a truce?” 

Iseshena’s breath caught in her throat, a gasp that turned into a shiver. “But, you still want to stay here?” 

‘Yes,” he promised, sincerely. He did, even with the horrible chickens, the cat that didn’t like him and the strange shrine up in his bedroom. Because here was where Iseshena was, there was no other place he would have rather been - even if her mother was coming to visit. “Do you?”

“Of course.” She whispered. 

Sitting forward he pulled her back into a kiss, he sucked the frown from her lip, breathed in her gasps.

Breathless, she told him in Elvish, “I love you.” Or rather she told him she loved a type of pottery formed from lime-rich clay. And he chuckled, struggling to undo the ties of her unfamiliar dress, because he knew what she meant. 

  
  



	3. Compass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keeper Deshanna comes to the Cottage on the Amaranthine Coast, bringing gifts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Three for [beaubashley's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beaubashley) prompt,  
> And huge thank you to [Dore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dore_N/pseuds/Dore_N) for pointing me in the right direction <3

Iseshena sat on her knees by the hearth nursing the fire, deciding as ‘fire-born,’ she could tend some of her worries into the burning logs. The task was easy enough, hearthkeeper was a job she could do very well, had been trained to do well, but never had to do. When she did it, it was always a choice. 

Beside her there was a large basket of freshly cut logs, stacked haphazardly and a little damp from a storm that had rolled in across the rocky coast three nights prior. Iseshena had been dozing, her cheek against Solas’ shoulder on the comfy sofa that’s springs had gone so long ago that sitting on it felt like sinking into an abyss. 

Solas had been reading a small history of the Brecilian Forest, straining his eyes in the dying candlelight. His arm tucked carelessly around her, fingers splayed against her waist. 

Iseshena had sprung up at the first crack of thunder that rumbled low and deep across the sky, her eyes adjusting to the early afternoon gloom and a single word upon her lips; “chickens.” 

At the panic in her tone, the little book was already forgotten, cast aside onto the little table by the sofa. And he too was on his feet, head turned towards the window as a fork of lightning ripped across the slate-grey sky. Menacing storm clouds that rolled over tumultuous seas towards them, heavy-laden with rain. 

In an easy synchronised effort, they herded the chickens into their pens, despite much protestant clucking and squawking as the rudely enforced early bedtime. Success painted their expressions when the first raindrop spiralled down from the heavens and caught Iseshena on the cheek, rolling down like a teardrop. 

Solas saw, stepped up to her and with his thumb removed the offending drip, offering the words, “the chickens will be safe.” 

“Yes,” she breathed, his fingers lingering against her face, “it seems we did it.” Her words carried more weight than the simple victory of herding the feathery monsters to safely wait out the storm. And she pressed onto her toes, kissing him as the heavens opened in earnest. Storms were so much easier to weather when they were together. 

And neither of them had remembered to cover the firewood.

Iseshena smiled at the memory as she placed a damp log against the metal grate of the hearth and watched the steam hiss out from the cracks in the rough bark. Then using wrought iron tongs she picked up one of the burning logs and turned it over, exposing the charcoal tops to the air. 

“What are you doing on the floor, vhenan?” Solas asked from close enough behind her that she felt a shiver upon her skin as his breath caught the edge of her ear. Some hunter she was, she hasn’t noticed him kneel beside her on the plush rug. 

“Well,” she hummed, then stretched and leant back against him, her shoulder against his chest. “There is a chill in the air today,” the flames licked up, accompanied with sweet-wood smoke that disappeared up into the chimney.

“And your mother is coming and you are worried that the cold will play havoc with her joints?” He prompted.

Iseshena sighed contentedly, tilting her head to look at him, she liked that he knew. But just for confirmation she whispered, “exactly.” For a moment she was perfectly happy, when a frown crept into her expression, and she looked at him curiously, “do you think you’ll still love me when I’m that old?”

They hadn’t talked about the future, not really. Just as they hadn’t talked about the Inquisition. When it had accidentally come up, they’d both dodged away from the topic, tiptoeing around the subject by mutual silent agreement.

If she wanted to talk about it now, he wouldn’t deny her. So Solas pressed her curls all over her left shoulder and told her, “I’ve loved you since that night, on the Chantry steps of Haven, I suspect I will for the rest of my life, nothing could change that.”

“Sweet talker,” Iseshena accused, but glanced back to offer a fugitive smile, uncharacteristically shy. But her everite eyes were on him. “Perhaps we should-“

There was a rap of knuckles against the wooden door of the cottage. 

Iseshena blinked, then cursed lightly under her breath. 

“Your mother’s timing is as impeccable as ever.” Solas murmured, pressing forward to gracefully rise to his feet and offering his hands to help her up. 

She hummed in agreement, allowing him to pull her to her feet. She glared quickly at the crackling fire in the hopes that it would be warm enough. Then she brushed her hand down the front of her tunic a little nervously. “You’d better be on your best behaviour,” she whispered, an eyebrow raised in amusement.

Solas placed a hand against the small of her back, asking lightly, “when am I not?” Although his tone was light and inconsequential, there was a tightness in his body against her. A subtle nervousness, that crept up from the pit of his stomach, that she was attuned enough to his moods to recognise.

The Keeper and the Dread Wolf were supposed to be enemies, but Iseshena thought they’d both been a bit disappointed with each other’s lack of animosity but were still mostly coming to terms with the battle that hadn’t happened.

Iseshena went to the door, unhooking the latch with the residual part of her upper left arm and opening it with her right. “Mamae.”

“ _ Da’len _ ,” her Keeper smiled, skipping formality completely and bundling her daughter right into a rib-achingly tight hug, “it’s been too long.” She breathed, stepping back to press their foreheads together for a single moment in customary greeting before Keeper Deshanna looked over Iseshena. 

Deshanna seemed rather like the last time Iseshena had seen her, the angular bow-design of Andruil’s  _ vallaslin _ cut against her features in a pale pink, highlighting the smile lines about her mouth and the wrinkles around her warm everite eyes. Her long light grey hair had been braided up into a knot at the crown of her head, with two small plaits had come free from the knot and had been tucked behind her ear. 

“How was your journey?” Iseshena asked, passing her mother’s evaluation and offering to take her bag for her. When she did, she found the leather satchel was light on her shoulder and hung low against her hip. 

Her Keeper looked back over her shoulder to the sleek speckled brown hart, tied up next to Torchbearer in the little stable nibbling politely at the hay trough between them. Deshanna smiled fondly, “Dysoin did not like the steep paths coming down along the coast, but we made it.” 

“I should have come to meet you,” Iseshena grimaced, thinking of the gravel path that wove its way around the cliffs, one side sheer rock and the other a sheer drop into the swirling depths below. “Torchbearer knows the path well, and is too draft to even think of being afraid falling.” 

They shared a little laugh at Iseshena’s hart’s expense. Torchbearer was unfailingly loyal, fast as lightning when he needed to be, but thick as two planks of wood. 

Deshanna clucked approvingly, glancing over to see him looking at Dysoin munching on the hay between them with an utterly baffled expression. She said softly, “he’s a good hart.”

“He is,” Iseshena agreed. “Perhaps we should go riding tomorrow?” She would take her mother up into the Brecilian Forest, there were routes through the trees and they might even be able to stumble upon some of the ruins that littered the area or if they were extremely lucky, another Clan. 

But Iseshena never got her answer as Solas had joined her at the door. “Keeper,” he addressed formally, voice tight and sharp as a butterknife covered in marmalade. 

Deshanna’s back straightened, her eyes closed for a moment as she swallowed hard, her fingers curled in a pocket where she was sure her Keeper had stored her Keeper’s sylvanwood ring. And Iseshena could only imagine what it was whispering to her. A heartbeat later her expression smoothed out again and her ring was abandoned in her pocket. With a fragile, brittle smile, she offered to Solas, “perhaps, it would be better if we left our titles outside?” 

Solas nodded once, solemnly, without a single crack in the formality that he had wrapped around him like a wall of ice. It was a coldness that Iseshena hadn’t seen in him in years, and even then it was something that she had rarely seen. He blinked at the Keeper as though lost for words, his fingers dug into the doorframe, knuckles white as he gripped the wood. 

“Deshanna,” her mother prompted, quietly, like one might coo at an injured halla that was prone to bolting. 

“Please, come in, Deshanna.” Solas said stiffly and then retreated, muttering something about putting the kettle on and disappeared quickly to faff in the little kitchen. Beginning with measuring water into the heavy kettle, deciding against it and pouring the water into the sink and then repeating the process all over again until he was happy with his progress. 

With an eyebrow raised, Iseshena watched amused as the thought struck her that he was nervous and maybe for the first time he was actively trying to make a good impression with her mother. “Be nice,” she equally warned her Keeper, some uncertain happiness tugging at her cheek. She crossed her arms over her chest, making a note to tease him about it later. 

Deshanna gave her daughter an amused look and nodded toward the satchel that was on Iseshena’s hip, “I’ve brought something for you.” 

“Oh?” Iseshena returned, pulling the satchel up onto the kitchen table. 

She stepped back to let her mother riffle through until she pulled out a flat parcel wrapped up in rice paper and tied with brown twine. She stepped back, offering it back to her daughter, “Mhaenal was making repairs a month back, and she saved some for you, just in case you weren’t really gone.”

With that cryptic sentence, Iseshena felt her heart bubble up into her throat. “You don’t mean-?” She broke off, not quite able to voice it in case she was wrong. With a glance a Solas, who was sorting through their collection of mugs to find the nicest, Iseshena reached down for the twine one-handed, pulled it sharply and turned the bow into a knot. She grunted at it in annoyance, tugged the string and then sighed, “a little help.”

Without a word, Solas was the quickest to assist, placing the mugs down on the countertop and moving across the room, before pulling apart the knot with his graceful fingers and lying the twine down, the paper undisturbed. He didn’t wait to see what was inside, returning back to the apparently delicate art of tea making. 

Iseshena buried her smile at his instinctive assistance and folded the paper back to see a shock of crimson fabric. “Is this a sail?” She breathed, recognising the embroidered swirls, barely visible unless looking for them, red against red. 

Her Keeper only quirked an eyebrow in acknowledgement. It was an araval sail. “It is, in case you ever need to come back to us.”

“Mamae,” Iseshena breathed in a warning tone, eyes narrowed and flinching back from the gift as though it was poisoned. Horrified she looked back for Solas’ support but he was gone, the back door by the pantry to the chickens closing softly. On the counter were two steaming cups of herbal tea, left where he had made them. Quietly she added, “you shouldn’t have said that.” 

Deshanna shook her head, moved across to take the cups and set one in front of her daughter. “As you well know, your father wouldn’t give up the sea for me, and I could not give up the Clan for him, whatever you think of your duty-“

“You think I’m going to be like you?” Iseshena accused, her voice wretched in her throat, “give up and run back to the Clan the moment things get difficult?” It was a horrible thing to say, she knew the moment that she said it. That she’d needled her mother right where it hurt. 

Her mother wrapped her arms around her chest and exhaled softly, closing her eyes for a moment to hide the hurt. “I don’t expect you to be, but it is my duty to ensure that you know that you can come home.” 

“I assumed that it didn’t need to have been said.” Iseshena returned furiously.

_ “Da’len.” _

“I am not a child, I can make my own choices.” Iseshena hissed, petulantly, and in a flurry of teenage angst that was interrupted with a dark shadow jumped up onto the table and sniffed wearily at the sail. “Damn it Dirthamen.” She muttered, scooping the black cat up into her arms and sitting him back down on the floor. 

Yellow eyes fixed on her silently, with a look of utter cat-like scorn. He pawed around the kitchen table, weaving his way around the table legs and sprung up again on the other side of the table. As though the cat thought that the problem had simply been the direction that he jumped onto the table, not the far that he was on the table at all. 

Deshanna blinked at the cat, opened her mouth, but cooed fondly when Dirthamen flopped down on the sail, little paws kneading the air above him. 

“That is not your bed,” Iseshena grumbled, rolling her eyes and scooping him up again, crossing the room and putting him down gently on the edge of the sofa that he’d slowly claimed as his territory. “Go on, stay over there.” 

A scowl on his face at being moved, Dirthamen’s bright yellow eyes followed her as she went back to the table. Then he yawned, stretched and lay down, head against a cushion. 

“I think you know that it isn’t you who worries me, some duties are difficult to lay to rest.” Deshanna offered, a little quietly, with her fingers wrapped around her mug looking intently at her tea and not at her daughter. 

Iseshena didn’t have a good response to that, so she took the sail and shook it out, as best she could one handed. It wasn’t a full  _ araval  _ sail she realised, only about quarter sized. More like a banner or a flag, depending on which way she oriented it. “I can see why you never let me have a cat growing up, there’s fur on everything.” She placed it back on the table after she’d made a mess of folding it back. She grimaced at it and decided that it was the best that she could do, a crumpled and sad looking thing. 

“I worry for you, I am your mother, I am entitled to worry for you,” Deshanna insisted as though Iseshena hadn’t tried to change the subject, she was not letting her daughter wriggle out of this conversation. It was one she felt had to be had. Softly, she continued, “perhaps you don’t remember what you were like, back at Skyhold?”

“Pillowcases, all of my clothes, even the rug is more fur than wool.” Iseshena answered, refusing point blank to be drawn back into the conversation. If Iseshena was stubborn, she’d learnt it from her mother and she wouldn’t be cowed. 

Deshanna clucked, as she refolded the sail and smoothed it with both hands. “After you came back from Crestwood,” Deshanna continued, taking the sail herself and folding it properly. 

“I’m thinking of getting another cat.” Iseshena interrupted. 

“You weren’t sleeping, and you had started drinking elfroot. If Sil hadn’t-”

“That was for the mark and - no.” Iseshena smacked her hand down forcefully onto the table. “Mamae, I don’t want to talk about it.” She cut off, firmly, her eyes flicking towards the door through which Solas had fled. Unsure if she wanted to escape into the back garden or close the door so there was no chance of being overheard. “It’s fine, it will be fine, we made a deal-”

Deshanna raised a solitary eyebrow, and didn’t say another word. But, Iseshena knew she didn’t understand. The two women sat for a moment in silence, each as stubborn as the other, each refusing to back down. 

Which was enough to make Iseshena collapse down heavily into one of the wooden kitchen chairs, “don’t.” She whispered, with a sigh, “we don’t talk about it-” she mouthed the word  _ ‘Crestwood,’ _ “-not here.” She looked out of the window, to the yard with the empty raised beds and empty planter buckets, waiting patiently for the first gasp of spring to be resown. 

“You don’t talk about  _ it _ at all?” Her Keeper was shaking her head.

“What else is there to say?” Iseshena curled her hand around her still warm mug. “It isn’t naivety, rather it is that one thing I learned from my stint as Inquisitor, that is to pick my battles.” She sipped her tea, sweet and sharp and citrus all at the same time. “There is something to be fought for here, and I do intend to fight for it, every day if I must.” 

Deshanna considered this, sitting across from her at the little kitchen table with ring-marks in the wood. But then, like the first fresh shoot of spring, breaking through the cold ground. she relented, with a smallest of nods. “Even me?”

“Didn’t you teach me to fight for what I believed in, for what was right?”

Her mother watched her for a moment, then she moved to sit next to Iseshena. “Yes, I did.” 

“No taking it back now.” Iseshena muttered, as her mother brushed a stray curl from her daughter’s face and tucked it neatly behind her ear, she gave her a sad knowing smile. As though she had a long suspected confirmation that Iseshena wasn’t coming back. So Iseshena dropped her head against her mother’s shoulder, “I thought you were disappointed with me, because of who-”

“I am so proud of you, always will be, never doubt that.” 

_ “Vhenan?”  _ Solas’ voice was enough to make Iseshena jump, and she twisted back in her chair. She wasn’t quite sure what he had been doing, but there was a smear of dirt across his cheek and a particularly determined expression that worried her in a way that she couldn’t verbalise. Solas hung in the doorway, in the liminal space between the outside and the Cottage. Addressing Deshanna, he asked, “may I borrow Iseshena for a moment?” 

Without waiting for her mother’s permission, Iseshena stood. Abandoning her empty mug and leaving her chair untucked. 

Deshanna muttered saying something about putting the kettle back on, getting to her feet with an accompanying rattle of bangles and charms. 

Letting the door by the pantry fall shut behind her. The garden was bare, the cold Winter’s of the Amaranthine Coast having stripped most of the foliage back. Although a few evergreen plants persisted. The wind was still, but Iseshena’s breath frosted in front of her as she spoke, “what have you been doing?” 

He gave her a small look, and replied cryptically, “it might be easier to show you.” He placed his hand on the small of her back, to encourage her forward. He was warm, against the chill of the Winter’s day and she leant into him. He always ran just a little bit hot.

The garden was less of a cohesive idea and more of separate little islands all connected by a sandstone gravel path that wound out from the door. It wrapped around the chicken coop, with a branching path heading over to the little stables. Another prong reached out towards a small collection of fruit trees, not enough to be properly called an orchard. Yet another took them to more raised planters, a small workshed and a long narrow strip of land where Iseshena had set up an archery range for herself. 

As Iseshena looked around, there was something new in the little fruit grove. A construct built within the living trees. In the centre was a sort of stone bench, set within a larger pentagonal structure of inwoven living tree branches acting like a trellis to frame the seating area. and Iseshena asked breathlessly, “what is this?” 

“It will be nicer in the spring,” Solas offered ruefully, his eyebrows heavy as he criticised his own work. “Once ivy grows over it, it shall be covered properly.” 

“No, I meant what is it meant to be?” Iseshena insisted again, turning away from the structure to face him. Despite the obvious, it was just a bench. But she’d long learnt that around Solas, nothing was ‘just’ anything. She pressed her hand to his chest, “Solas,” she prompted. “My mother’s been here two hours and it’s inspired you to make some garden furniture? What is this about?” 

He glanced towards it as though worried about his handiwork, and he racked a hand over his scalp, before he faced her properly. And rather solemnly he said. “Seeing your mother reminded me of everything that you are giving up to be here. Has she convinced you to leave?”

Iseshena wasn’t quite sure what to make of his sudden doubts. They cropped up, in both of them every so often, but he’d never built benches because of it. She tried to be flippant, to drain some of the tension from between them. She grinned, “please, like you haven’t listened to the whole conversation?”

“Are you accusing me of eavesdropping?” He matched her tone and even smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. 

“I’m accusing you of avoiding the question.” She teased, pointedly looking towards the bench underneath the trellis. 

Solas sighed, seemingly unable to escape the trap laid for him, and he told her, “it’s just a place for your sail, if you wished to stay.” 

It was so thoughtful that it made her a little dizzy, and she couldn’t understand why he’d tried to hide his intention from her. Iseshena gasped softly, stepping closer to investigate, at the back of the bench, there was a small frame, a space with hooks to hang the sail with a covering to protect the sail from getting weatherworn. She looked up at the criss-cross boards above her that hid her from the open sky. It was so achingly Dalish, and not all at the same time. 

Like them, a compromise. A handshake between two worlds. 

“It’s beautiful.” She turned back to him, and placed her hand upon his collar and pulled him down to kiss her. 

“Is it what you want,  _ vhenan?”  _ He asked, still looking solemn after she dropped down from the kiss.

Ideally, she wanted to have him right then and there, to test the structural integrity of the structure that he’d created. “What I want for the moment is immaterial,” she gave him a pointed look, wondering if she could telepathically communicate the full extent of her desires, “we’ll circle back to it when Mamae is gone. For the time being we should be good hosts.”

“And then?” 

“Don’t you know by now that I’m not going anywhere?” She whispered, soothing the worry that had settled underneath his ribs. It grew like the brambles that grew near the stables, every time she was convinced they had been ripped out, another shoot appeared.

“If I knew that, I might become complacent in your happiness. I do not want every moment of your time here to be a battle.” He confessed, proving that he very much had been listening in to everything she’d said in the kitchen. 

“It is the good kind of battle,” Iseshena reassured, she pressed onto her toes before he could respond to that, kissing him again. Then a little breathlessly she added, “being with you is not effortless, but I would have it no other way. I have a destination in mind, and I do not mislike the journey. So long as it is with you.” 

This time, his hand drew to her hip bone and pulled her tight against him. His tongue grazed over her lip and maybe they would break in the brench - 

Just as she completed the thought he pulled away sharply. Solas cleared his throat when she gave him a disappointed look, his eyes flicking towards the doorway where Keeper Deshanna was standing with her eyebrow raised. 

“The kettle has boiled,” her Keeper announced, not quite looking at either of them. “But, Solas, if I may?” Deshanna began. 

“No thank you, to the tea.” He replied, cutting her Keeper off and beginning to withdraw again. 

“I understand that,” Deshanna smiled, “only I brought something for you as well.” 

That caught both of them off guard. Solas looked at Iseshena, who only shrugged, she couldn’t guess what it could be.

But with a little prodding, and an elbow, Iseshena got Solas back into the kitchen. The warmth of the Cottage enveloping them like a blanket. And he sat down at the table looking like a man waiting for his executioner. 

Deshanna, oblivious to Solas’ discomfort, was making a show of digging through her satchel, to the point that Iseshena wasn’t sure if this was some mad ruse or if whatever it was had fallen out of her bag on the ride down to the Cottage. Finally, Deshanna pulled a small package out triumphantly. “I suspected that you would have no use for Dalish trinkets.” The corner of her smiles pulled up in an amused smile. “So I have not brought for you a  _ Dalish _ trinket.”

He shifted, a little uncomfortable. Weary at what it could be. 

“This belonged to Iseshena’s father, he left it with me the last time I saw him.” She smiled fondly, then she slid the small package across the table. Like the sail it was wrapped up in rice paper tied with twine. “He said that it would keep me pointed in the right direction, if I ever doubted myself. I thought it may be of use to you.” She gave Iseshena a soft look, “though, now I am not so sure you need it.”

Solas unwrapped it.

“What is it?” Iseshena asked, pressing into her toes to see over Solas’ shoulder as he unwrapped the unexpected gift. 

“A compass.”

  
  



End file.
